Personal hygiene and physical training for women

by Anna M. Galbraith

Again, from the esthetic point of view, the size of the foot must be in proportion to that of the body. Artists declare that every foot that has worn a shoe is deformed, and so, when they wish to make a study of the foot, they go to the shores of Italy, where the peasant women have never worn shoes.

Paget’s description of a perfect female foot is great breadth and fulness of instep, a well-marked great toe, a long second toe, projecting a little beyond the great toe, and a very small little toe.

Since the feet are the part of the body to come in direct contact with the greatest amount of cold, whether on the floor of the house or the pavement of the street, it is a matter of prime importance to the entire body that they should be warmly clad. While for house wear and in the summer time a French kid is a most comfortable shoe, for street wear and outdoor exercise in cold weather a heavier leather with thick soles is requisite as a protection against the cold and damp.

Rubbers should always be worn when the pavements are damp, even if it is not raining, and in snow-storms and very heavy rains cloth gaiters should be worn over the shoes, to keep the ankles dry, and later to protect them from the wet skirts.

The Stockings.—Great care must be taken to have the foot of the stockings sufficiently long and loose; this is doubly the case with woolen stockings, which are apt to shrink so much in the wash. A too tight or too short a foot of the stocking interferes with the circulation and causes a cold foot, and when the stocking foot is too short, it produces the same deformities that too short a shoe does.

The trouble generally begins in childhood; mothers forget in buying stockings for their children that stockings shrink in the laundry and that children’s feet grow. The result is that the stocking-foot is apt to be too short before it is worn out, and so the toes are bent or cramped together, and there is the starting-point for deformities of the feet as well as corns and bunions. As much harm may come from wearing too short a stocking-foot as too short a shoe.

Again, with the present mode of wearing the stocking supporters attached to the corset, or, indeed, one of the functions of the stocking-supporters may be said to be the holding down of the corsets, the supporters are shortened for this purpose, and as a result the entire foot of the stocking is pulled on, and an artificial shortening of the stocking-foot is produced; and this point must be borne in mind in purchasing stockings.

Woolen stockings should always be worn during the cold weather. Garters should never be worn around the leg, whether above or below the knees, since, in order to be sufficiently tight to hold the stockings up, they interfere with the circulation by the constriction of the leg, and so cause cold feet and greatly increase the trouble in case of varicose veins.

The Essential Qualities for Winter Underclothing.—These are that the clothing must be light, loose, warm, and equally distributed over the body. From the hygienic standpoint, the underclothing is the most important part of the dress.

We have seen that much of the energy of the body is spent in maintaining its normal temperature, and that the two main functions of the skin are the preservation of the normal body temperature and the excretion of certain effete matters in the form of watery vapors.